by Ann Gabhart
How could she be so angry with him when he’d just told her how much he loved her?
He went on into the school just as the bell rang. He wouldn’t let her think he was a coward who spoke of his love and then ran away when she didn’t speak of her own love in return. He had loved her for many years with not so much as a glance his way from her. He wouldn’t give up so easily. He’d fight Preacher Reece for her if he had to, but first he’d reread the book of James in the Bible so next time he’d be readier to bridle his tongue and only say the right things to her.
Something he wasn’t sure he’d ever learned to do, Victor thought now as he brought his hammer down and hit the horseshoe on his anvil. He missed the intended spot by a fraction of an inch. That’s what he got for letting his mind wander away from his work.
He picked up the horseshoe with his tongs and laid it back in the coals. He was glad Haskell Jenkins had left the heat of the shop to wait outside in the shade for Victor to have the shoe ready for his horse. He wouldn’t have wanted Haskell to see him make such a boneheaded strike.
He rubbed the sweat out of his eyes with his shirtsleeve. His shoulder ached. He rotated it to loosen it up, but that just made the ache go deeper. He stared over at the shelves where a bottle was hidden in behind a pile of rags. It was less than half full, but that would be plenty to dull the pain.
He shut his eyes and pulled in a long breath. He held the air in his lungs as new beads of sweat popped up on his forehead, but he didn’t let his feet move toward the shelves. He wouldn’t pick up the bottle today no matter how much his shoulder hurt. He’d hurt worse. Lots of times. And he’d told Kate to tell Nadine he’d be at the supper table that night. Nadine wouldn’t believe it was true, but she’d bake the raspberry pie anyway. She was a far better woman than he deserved.
He loved Nadine as desperately as ever. Much more even than that day he’d first admitted his love, but he kept failing her and falling short of being the man she should have. What had happened to him that made him keep doing the things he knew he shouldn’t do and kept him from doing the things he should?
Maybe her father was right. Maybe he did have a demon inside him. A demon that only the bottle could quiet. Or maybe his father was right that some men were born with moral courage while others had to search for it wherever they could find it. Be that inside the pages of a book, with a gun, or in a bottle.
Victor shut his mind to the call of the bottle and lifted the horseshoe out of the coals. It was yellow hot, and this time when he hit it with his hammer, the iron shaped just as he intended.
10
______
That night Kate’s father kept his word and came home to eat a piece of raspberry pie warm from the oven. There wasn’t even the hint of alcohol on his breath, and the tired lines on his face vanished when Kate’s mother stepped over behind him at the table to massage his sore shoulders.
After supper Kate’s mother and father settled down in the next room with their books while Evie and Kate cleaned up the kitchen. Tori got to go on out and play since she’d caught the fish for their supper. Kate started to point out that she deserved the same consideration for getting briar scratches and chancing snakebites when she climbed into the middle of the raspberry vines to pick the berries for the pie, but she didn’t want to hear how Evie would moan and cry if she got stuck doing the dishes alone. So Kate just gathered the dishes off the table without a word. Outside the neighborhood kids were yelling as they played kick-the-can. A good group must have gathered out in the Merritts’ front yard the way they did almost every evening.
Kate looked at the pile of dishes and sighed. “Everybody will be gone home before we get all these dishes done.”
“You’re too old to play kick-the-can and hide-and-seek anyway.” Evie gave her a look. “When are you going to start acting your age?”
“Never, I hope. Hide-and-seek in the dark is fun. Unless you run into the clothesline. That’s not much fun.” Kate put her hand on her neck and made a choking noise before she picked up the dishpan and held it out toward Evie. The enamel had chipped off in places, leaving thin black spots, but so far it hadn’t sprung a leak. “It’s your turn to wash.”
“No, it isn’t.” Evie backed up a few steps as if she thought the pan might bite her.
“I washed last night. It’s my turn to dry.” Kate kept the pan held out toward Evie.
“Well, maybe so, but please will you wash again?” Evie held up her hands and waggled her fingers. “I filed and buffed my fingernails this afternoon, and dishwater will ruin them.”
“Yeah, yeah, and your big date with Gorgeous George is coming up.” Kate set the pan down on the cabinet and got the teakettle off the stove. She put the cake of lye soap in the pan and poured the water in on top of it to make the most suds. She hated not having sudsy water when she washed dishes.
“You’ll melt all the soap,” Evie told her.
“You don’t like the way I do it, you can wash them yourself.” Kate set the teakettle back on the stove with a thump.
“Stop that fussing, girls,” Mama called from the next room.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kate answered.
“Now see what you’ve done,” Evie said under her breath. “Upset Mama. And when everything was going so nice tonight.”
Kate started to smack Evie in the face with the dishrag. She could almost see the soap bubbles landing in Evie’s red hair and her eyes popping wide open, but Kate dropped the rag into the hot water instead. She didn’t want to disturb the peace of the evening. Evie was right about that much. Besides, just thinking about it was almost as good as doing it.
For a second she felt guilty as she remembered one of Grandfather Reece’s sermons about sin and how if a person thought about doing something wrong in his heart it was the same as doing it. But he was talking about big things like murder and adultery. Not a smack with a dishrag. The Lord would surely understand how a sister could drive a person batty enough to think about doing something a little bit wrong sometimes.
Kate washed the glasses and set them in the drain pan for Evie to dry. In the living room Mama laughed. Maybe at something in her book or something Daddy said. Kate didn’t know which. She couldn’t hear what her parents were saying over the clank of the dishes in the dishpan, but it was still a good sound. She smiled in spite of the pile of dishes and the games going on outside without her. She even tried to make peace with Evie. “You and George going to a movie Friday night?”
“Probably,” Evie said as she twirled the dishtowel up inside one of the glasses. The towel squeaked against the glass. “But don’t be trying to get George to invite you to ride along. This is my date. You want to have a date, you get your own boyfriend.”
“You can have George. I don’t want him or any other boy.” Kate made a face.
“Aren’t you ever going to grow up, Kate? You’re fourteen. Plenty old enough to get sweet on a boy.” Evie picked up one of the plates and dried it off. “Maybe sometime we could have a double date. Me and George and you and . . . let’s see.” She thought a minute. “How about Harry Winters?”
“Harry Winters! I wouldn’t walk across the porch to see him. He uses his fingers instead of a handkerchief to blow his nose.” Kate shuddered.
“That’s disgusting.” Evie frowned at her.
“Really disgusting.” Kate washed a bowl and then held it up toward the light coming in the window behind them to see if it was clean.
“I mean you telling me that. Ladies don’t talk about those sorts of things.” Evie picked up another dish to dry. “So maybe not Harry. Who do you think is good-looking? Besides George, that is.”
Kate bit her lip to keep from saying the only thing good-looking about George was his car. That would just make Evie squawk and then there would go the peace of the evening down the creek. So instead she shrugged a little and said, “Oh, I don’t know.”
She ran through the boys in the neighborhood in her head, but she couldn’t imagine wanting
to date any of them. They were all right for playing baseball or catching frogs in the creek or seeing how many gooseberries they could eat without getting the sour shivers, but certainly not for sitting close and holding hands the way Evie and George were always doing. Kate had even caught the two of them kissing. That was really worrisome, thinking about George maybe ending up her brother-in-law. A worry her mother obviously shared, because she was always reminding Evie there was more than one fish in the sea.
Kate was thinking about trying to change the subject to how many fish might actually be in the sea—it had to be in the millions—and how there were probably lots of fish nobody had ever seen, but Evie spoke first. “There’s got to be at least one boy who makes your heart go thumpity-thump.”
“Well, maybe if we were seeing who could run the fastest.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.” Evie sounded disgusted.
“I know.” Kate scrubbed the fork she was holding until it shone before she went on. “But gee whiz, Evie, I’ve known these boys forever. And most of them have no idea how to carry on an intelligent conversation. I’ll bet they’ve never even thought about how many fish are in the sea. They just want to talk about the latest prank they pulled or about where the best hunting spots are or their dogs. Actually I like talking about their dogs.” She laid a handful of washed utensils in the drain pan. “I wish Bullet hadn’t gotten run over. But even when they do talk about their dogs, none of them are half as much fun to talk to as Graham.”
“I don’t know what you see in that crazy old man.” Evie shook her head at Kate as she picked out all the forks to dry and put in the drawer before she did the spoons.
“He’s not crazy. A little odd maybe, but definitely not crazy.”
“You couldn’t prove that by me.” Evie waved her towel back and forth while she waited for Kate to finish washing the mashed potatoes pan. “What in the world do you talk about with him? Besides how many hats his mother had.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Anything and everything. Birds, old Poe, freedom. Fish in the sea.” Kate handed Evie the pan and picked up the skillet. They were almost through, and the noise level outside was as strong as ever. Nobody had gone home yet. “The past. He tells me things about when Daddy was our age.”
“He’s got to be lots older than Daddy,” Evie said.
“I guess so. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know things about Daddy when he was growing up. We know things about the little kids around here.” Finally Kate had the skillet clean. She fished around in the bottom of the dishpan for any utensils she might have missed.
Evie wiped off the skillet and set it down on the cabinet beside the stove. “He doesn’t look like he’d know much of anything about anything.”
“Funny. I think he looks like he knows about a lot of things. Things I don’t even know to ask about, but that maybe I will someday.”
“You’re not normal, Kate.”
“That’s a mean thing to say. And after I washed the dishes for you when it was your turn.” Kate wrung out the dishrag and carried the pan to the back door to sling the dishwater out in the yard. When she came back in the kitchen to put the pan under the cabinet again, she said, “Besides, maybe I’m the normal one and you’re the one who’s not normal.”
“I don’t think so.” Evie carefully hung her dishtowel on the rack on the side of the cabinet and then gave Kate a pitying look.
Kate balled up the dishrag in her hand. She could probably hit Evie right in the nose with it if she tried. She shut her eyes and counted to five and made herself shake the rag out and lay it on the cabinet to dry. “Who’s got red hair? That’s not the normal color. Most people have brown hair like me.”
“Hair color doesn’t make you normal or weird. Besides, my hair is pretty. Everybody says so.”
“Okay. But who cries like a baby when they don’t get their way even if they are sixteen?” Kate said. “Who needs somebody to go with them to the outhouse after dark?”
“Now who’s being mean?” Evie’s cheeks flushed red and her lips trembled.
“Not mean. Truthful. I guess that’s one of my weirder characteristics. Not trying to hide from the truth.”
“Oh, go on outside and play with your little friends,” Evie said with a wave of her hand. “Just be careful and don’t let Fern or the gypsies get you.”
Kate made a face at Evie. “The gypsies like redheaded girls, and they don’t care whether it’s dark or daylight. They grab whatever they want whenever they want it.”
The color drained out of Evie’s face. “They don’t really, do they?”
“No, not really,” Kate relented. “They just steal apples off your trees or clothes off your clothesline.”
“Fern does that.”
“True, but Graham always brings whatever it is back or trades you something better for it.”
“It’s still wrong to steal. That’s one of the Ten Commandments.”
“But remember she’s not normal. Like me.” Kate stuck her tongue out at Evie.
“You’d better not steal anything.”
“What is the matter with you two? Stop it right now.” Mama was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
“Sorry,” Kate said quickly and slipped out the back door before her mother could make her go to bed early. She wasn’t worried about Evie getting in trouble. Evie never got in trouble. It must have something to do with being the oldest and so ladylike with that pretty red hair like their Grandmother Reece had had, the one who had died when Kate’s mother was twelve.
The next morning after breakfast Mama gave her a talking to about how sisters were supposed to try to get along, and how it wasn’t nice to say things that got other people scared and how wouldn’t it be good if they could have just one night when nobody was upset with anybody else.
“Yes, ma’am.” Kate ducked her head, stared at the table, and tried not to think about Evie gloating in the next room because Kate was in trouble.
“Your sister should be your best friend,” Mama said. “I always wanted a sister. Brothers are all right, but a sister, she can understand things about you without you ever saying a word. It’s like your heart divided and made another person.”
“Twin sisters maybe.” Kate looked up at her mother. “Evie and me aren’t twins.”
“You don’t have to be twins to love one another and help one another. Remember, sisters are a gift and a blessing.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do love my sisters, but nobody can get along with everybody else every minute of every day, can they?”
“I suppose not. At least not without the help of the good Lord.” Mama smiled and reached across the table to pat Kate’s cheek before she stood up.
Kate hid her sigh of relief that the sister lecture was over. She got up too and went over to look at the jars of raspberry jam lined up on the windowsill. The light purple jam seemed to absorb the sunlight hitting the jars and then bounce it out into the kitchen. There were only five jars. Even the biggest wild raspberries weren’t much bigger than the tip of Kate’s little finger, so it took a lot of picking to have enough for jam. “You want me to take Graham his jar of jam this morning? I promised him one for showing me where the best raspberries were and helping me pick.”
“You can later, but first take one up to Father. He’ll be at the church praying over his sermon this morning.”
Kate picked up one of the jars and let her mother kiss her cheek before she went out the back door and cut through the field behind the house toward the church. She hoped her grandfather would be too deep in the Scriptures to want to pray over her this morning. She didn’t really mind the prayers. Everybody needed prayers, but sometimes he went on and on until her knees got numb.
Kate climbed the fence in behind the church and looked over toward the back door. It was closed. That was a sure sign Grandfather Reece wasn’t at the church yet. She’d go around to the front door and sit on the steps to wait for him. The steps w
ould be in the shade this time of the morning.
When she came around the corner of the church building, a little girl was already sitting on the steps. She looked up at Kate and said, “Are you an angel?”
11
______
Me? An angel? Far from it. Just ask anybody,” Kate said with a laugh as she squatted down in front of the steps.
The little girl pulled her faded red dress down over her knees as though she wanted to hide as much of her small body as she could from Kate. Little bare feet crusted with dirt stuck out below her dress. The child pushed her dark curly hair back from her face and dropped her chin down on her knees to wait for whatever Kate was going to say next. Tear streaks ran down her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying now.
Kate had never seen the child before. “Are you lost, sweetie?”
“No.” The child mashed her mouth together, and tears filled her dark chocolate-brown eyes and overflowed to slide down her cheeks. She didn’t bother wiping them away as she stared up at Kate with a mixture of fear and hope. “You have to be an angel. Please.”
“Why do I have to be an angel?” Kate moved over to sit down beside the child. She started to put her arm around her, but then stopped. She didn’t want to frighten the little girl.
“Because my mommy said that if I sat here and didn’t cry, an angel would come take care of me and love me and bring me something to eat. I tried really hard. Just like I promised Mommy.” The little girl looked down at her feet. After a few seconds she went on in a tiny, sad voice. “But I couldn’t keep all the tears in. They just came out.”
“Where is your mommy?” Kate asked softly.
“She left. With Daddy. She had to.” The little girl pulled her dress down farther over her knees until the hem touched the top of her feet. She curled her toes under as if to hide them too.
“Why did she have to?”
“Because of the baby in her tummy. Daddy, he’s gonna find work and then they’re coming back for me. But Daddy said this looked like a good place. He said it had gardens and apple trees and two churches. Most places only have one. They kept Kenton because he’s sick. Nobody wants a sick boy. I told them I might be sick too, but they said the angel wouldn’t care. That she’d make me feel better. They’re coming back for me. Mommy promised.”
